Kenny's Hair
by Totoromo
Summary: Yachiru does something to Kenpachi's hair, and why is it so freaking hot outside? A look behind how squad eleven functions. T, for language.
1. Puppies

**Title: **Kenny's Hair

**Fandom: **Bleach

**Rating: **T, for swearing.

**Description: **Yachiru does something to Kenpachi's hair, and why is it so freaking hot outside? A look behind how squad eleven functions.

**Disclaimer: **Bleach is created and owned by Tite Kubo, I merely pay homage to characters and a story I love.

**Puppies**

* * *

Yachiru bounced around the room, gleefully making chirping noises.

"Damn it," Ikkaku said, rubbing his temples, "Did someone feed you sugar for breakfast or something?"

"Nope! Komama had more puppies," she replied.

Ikkaku had to mull that over for awhile. Komama…Komamura? Captain Sajin? Well at least she wasn't calling him "doggie" anymore. Wait…he…had puppies? That wasn't possible…right? Plus, wasn't he a wolf? Well, wolf babies would be puppies too, right?

Yumichika sighed and looked over at Ikkaku. Really, he was completely helpless by himself. "She means that one of his dogs had another litter," he clarified for the confused 3rd seat.

"Oh," said Ikkaku, his expression clearing a little.

"Take me to see them! Take me!" Yachiru demanded, throwing herself on Ikkaku's shoulders, drooling on his bare head.

"I have a better idea, Yachiru," Yumichika said, stepping in before the livid looking Ikkaku could respond. He was feeling particularly kind this morning because Ikkaku had said that his hair "seemed really shiny today", which he hadn't meant as a compliment, but Yumichika had been glad to buy it as one. "You should get Captain Zaraki to take you. He's been bored all day!"

"Ooooohh," Yachiru was thinking that that was a much better idea than making baldy take her. He was always so cranky.

Kenpachi hadn't really cared. In fact, he was actually a little relieved to be walking around, even though it was so damn hot. Being hot pissed him off. He glared intensely at a random passing shinigami, who promptly flash stepped to safety.

Captain Sajin was fond of Yachiru, or at least tolerated her, which was good considering the various fairly terrible nicknames she came up for him. He did like that she was always very interested in his dogs though. He was happy to show her the new puppies. Kenpachi milled around outside, hoping he could catch someone's eye. He doubted anyone would fight him, but sometimes just chasing them down was kind of fun.

"Why are these ones different colors than the other ones?" she questioned.

"Well, you see their mom is a different breed than the ones you saw last year," Komamura explained.

Yachiru tilted her head.

"See how their mom is golden? They are golden too," he simplified.

"Oh, and the other ones were black and their mom was black too!"

"Yes, babies look like their parents, that why you can sometimes look at someone and know what family they are from," Komamura was wondering if he had said something wrong because Yachiru was looking confused again.

"But…Kenny doesn't look like me," she stated.

Komamura wasn't really sure how to answer that, but luckily at that moment Kenpachi had finally found some prey.

"Hahahaha!" Kenpachi crashed to the ground besides the petrified squad four member. He paused. Was the guy really not even going to try and get away? Maybe he should stab him a couple of times for lack of enthusiasm. He drew out his zanpakuto…

"Captain Zaraki," interrupted Komamura. "I'm fairly sure that this is the person I requested to come and make sure that the puppies are all healthy," he stepped carefully in front of the cowering squad four member, pointing him towards the small kennel where he kept his dogs. Between Yachiru and Kenpachi, Komamura really wasn't sure who was the most childish. At least you could, sometimes, reason with Yachiru. Kenpachi was rabid all the time. Perhaps he needed shots? He wondered if he should suggest that to Captain Unohana**.**

* * *

That evening, at the Shinigami Women's Association, Yachiru had an idea. Almost an idea, she could feel it just at the edges of her mind. "Can you say that again?" she asked Rangiku.

"Oh, I was just saying that I was wondering if I would look good with lighter blond hair," Rangiku repeated.

"You can do that?" Yachiru asked curiously. "How?"

* * *

A couple of days later, Kenpachi was sprawled out on the floor of his living quarters. What the hell? It had to be almost midnight, why was it still so damn hot? Moist, wet, damp hot too. The humidity crushed in, made it seem like every breath was taken in a damn sauna. Maybe all of the sake hadn't been a good idea. Then again, if he drank enough, it should help him sleep through the heat. He quickly downed another bottle and dozed, not bothering to get into his bed. At least in the living room there was a breeze from his open front door.

He woke up. "Go back to sleep, Kenny," Yachiru said.

He sighed. Ever since that big boobed blond woman had showed her how to braid hair Yachiru had constantly been playing with his. "For practice," she had said the first time he had caught her. Whatever, if she wanted to play with his hair, it was better if he was asleep anyways. He promptly nodded off again.


	2. The Beauty of Squad Eleven

**The Beauty of Squad Eleven**

* * *

Captain Zaraki didn't come into the office in the morning. That wasn't that unusual, but by the time it was noon and they still hadn't seen a trace of him or their lieutenant, Ikkaku and Yumichika decided to stop by the captain's quarters.

"Well, I can feel him in there, but not Yachiru," Ikkaku commented. Not that that meant a lot, considering how well Yachiru could hide her spiritual presence.

"Hey Captain!" he yelled through the open door, before cautiously entering. The last time this had happened he had found his captain naked and covered in blood. Ikkaku shuddered. Why the hell did he have to remember that? Now he was nervous. Once was enough. More than enough. For anyone, ever.

Kenpachi heard Ikkaku of course, and he figured Yumichika had to be there too. They had to come eventually.

* * *

Although he hadn't really thought about it before, his 3rd and 5th basically kept the whole squad from falling down around his ears. Ikkaku had more patience than he did with the new recruits, and would help them train. "It sucks to keep having to get new ones," he explained once to his captain. He didn't care if Kenpachi suddenly appeared in his living quarters with his zanpakuto drawn and blood lust in his eyes. He didn't bitch about stupid superficial wounds, or really big ones for that matter either. When some lame ass boring mission came down, Ikkaku gladly would accept it. Well, not gladly, but he sure as hell did it. He didn't ask for explanations, and Kenpachi was positive that if he ordered Ikkaku to attack the gates of hell he would do it without a thought.

Yumichika seemed like an odd fit with squad eleven. In fact, Kenpachi almost hadn't let him on, at least not as a seated officer. He had been discussing it inside with Ikkaku, who was very adamant about it, when Yumichika's fate had been sealed by what Kenpachi saw through his window.

"Hey, pretty boy!" a gruff looking man yelled.

Yumichika ignored him. He could tell just by the man's voice he was going to be ugly, and he really didn't want anymore ugly in his day right now.

"Hey, you fruit!" someone else in the small group that was forming yelled.

Fruit? Yumichika's eyes narrowed.

"HEY FAG! Get your candy ass over here so I can…" Yumichika's fist ended the man's sentence for him.

"Ha, got your attention did we?" snickered someone in the crowd. "Draw your zanpakuto!"

"Idiots! You think any of you are even worthy of seeing my zanpakuto? It's hardly even worth the effort I'm going to put in destroying all of your faces," Yumichika barely sounded angry, although he was seething. Ikkaku dragged him down here and what, now he gets mocked by these disgusting creatures? How did they even live with themselves? Did they not have mirrors?

"Oh yeah pretty boy?" said someone, close behind him.

Yumichika didn't think, just ducked, grabbed the man's foot, and casually tossed him through the window of a nearby building. He didn't pause either as he began to do what he said he was going to do. Their noses, he thought to himself, I'm going to break each and every one of these bastards' noses. At least that way they'll have to wear bandages over their faces and save people the pain of having to look at them.

Kenpachi watched the growing body pile outside with amusement. "You gonna help him?" he asked Ikkaku.

"You kidding? I wouldn't hear the end of it for a week," Ikkaku grinned.

Truth be told, once Kenpachi found out that Yumichika really did have fighting talent, as well as a pretty wicked temper, the odd way he looked and acted didn't matter to him at all. Hell, at least he did whatever the hell he wanted. He didn't bottle it up and pretend he was cold and emotionless like that damn Kuchiki. In fact, it wound up being a lot of fun. The days and weeks after the fresh recruits came in from the academy were the best.

"Hm, let's start with squad ten," suggested Yumichika, "It's closest."

Kenpachi grinned his agreement.

He was never very good at hiding his spiritual pressure, but most of the new kids were dumb as rocks anyways. He trailed along on the roof above Yumichika.

Yumichika never really did anything. Well, maybe he pranced about a little more than he usually would. In general though, he just walked by.

"Hey!" someone yelled, "Hey you, fancy boy!"

Yumichika tried to hid his grin as he kept walking.

"Oh, guess he's too good for you!" someone else yelled.

"HEY, I'm talking to you!"

There were now four people standing blocking Yumichika's way.

"Only four, Captain's not going to be happy," thought Yumichika. "Oh well, we have all day."

"Look here you little queer…"

Captain Zaraki jumped down from the roof. "What was that?"

The new recruits might be dumb as rocks, but even rocks know when they've just made a very big mistake. There was only silence. One bolted, but Yumichika easily nabbed him and threw him back with the rest.

"You know," Kenpachi continued. "squad eleven doesn't really like cheap little cowardly bastards like you."

"In fact," he grinned evilly, "you could almost say…we hate them," his finished, drawing his zanpakuto.

Oddly enough, Captain Ukitake always liked this part of the year. He called it "sensitivity training". Kenpachi, while of course blood thirsty, didn't consider the piss poor fighting of the new recruits to be worth killing them over, and a couple of broken bones…ok, a lot of broken bones, never hurt anyone (much). Plus, now they had learned where squad four was, Jushiro pointed out to those of his bruised and bloody squad members who had been unfortunate enough to catcall at Yumichika. The other captains took similarly relaxed views, Soi Fon telling anyone that got hurt it was their own damn fault for not being fast enough to get away, and Mayuri mentioning that considering their proximity to squad eleven they really should just never go outside when they should be working hard indoors anyways.

It also helped inbed an image of squad eleven into those young impressionable minds. "Don't fuck with squad eleven…ever…" was the lesson, and it was definitely learned.

Plus, Yumichika did all of the paperwork. Before he had come Kenpachi had just set it all on fire. Literally. Head Captain Yamamoto had sent some scrawny necked paper-pusher to check on the status of his paperwork shortly after he had become captain, and he had just set the whole thing ablaze just to see the expression on the man's face. If you can believe it, the man actually put his hands into the fire to try and save some of it.

* * *

Some of these past events filtered through Kenpachi's mind as Ikkaku and Yumichika looked at him, because no matter how much he had kind of thought they were ok before, their reaction now made him realize how invaluable they were.

Ikkaku merely turned his head and said nothing. Yumichika also seemed to not react. They just stood in silence, commiserating with him. If they had given him condolences like, "oh, I'm so sorry," or offered fake optimism saying something like, "it's not really that bad!" he would have hit them. Instead, they just looked kind of sad and miserable, how he felt. In fact, they wound up just leaving without saying anything, which was best.

Outside, Ikkaku planned with Yumichika. "Ok, you go left and I'll go right, we'll go in a big circle until we meet at the other end. Make sure you warn everyone!"

He paused, "You know, I thought you might laugh, he did look ridiculous."

"Are you kidding? Having something bad done to your hair is painful, I would never mock someone for that," Yumichika said with a sigh, touching his own hair to make sure it was still perfectly in place.

So they went around squad eleven, warning them to absolutely not react to their captain's new look. No one had to ask what had happened once it was described to them. No one had to ask why they shouldn't react. The captain had been looking for a fight all week; right now, looking like this…half the squad decided that maybe the best course of action was just to pretend they were sick (or drunk, which is usually what the squad took sick days for) and stay in their quarters. In fact, actually getting drunk was probably best as well, it helped camouflage the deception.

"So, should we warn other squads?" asked Yumichika, when they met up again.

"Naw," replied Ikkaku, "he's gonna need to blow off steam anyways, let him get those poor saps instead of us."


	3. Frost on a Hot Day

**Frost on a Hot Day**

* * *

"You don't have to keep doing this," Kira said to Shuuhei as they walked together.

"What? There's nothing wrong with grabbing lunch with a friend," Shuuhei replied lightly.

"I know that you're all worried about me, but really I'm fine."

Shuuhei couldn't have disagreed more but there wasn't anything he could say that he hadn't already said several times before. It's not like Kira had ever been the cheery happy-go-lucky type of guy anyways, but ever since his captain had left he had become desolate. Or as Ikkaku had rudely put it the other day when they taken Kira out drinking, "a sinkhole where happy things go to die". That had only been reinforced when getting Kira drunk, which usually made him kind of goofy (and sometimes overly friendly), just made him go dead eyed and eventually unconscious.

It's not like Shuuhei didn't understand, but then again, he also hadn't seriously fought against a good friend like Kira had. Plus his captain hadn't been as…well…whatever the hell you'd describe Capta….ex-Captain Ichmaru as. "Evil snake fox demon thing," was the best Shuuhei could come with. Not that he'd say that to Kira, who somehow still seemed fond of the bastard. Then again, how would he himself act if was forced to fight against Kaname Tosen?

Shuuhei was lost in his thoughts and didn't feel Captain Zaraki coming. He didn't even notice the danger until it was almost too late.

Kira looked at the…thing in front of him. Kenpachi just glared at him.

"Ffffff…" giggled Kira. Holy shit, what the hell had Captain Zaraki done to himself? It was just too much…

"HahahahaHAHAHA…" he laughed loudly, voice cracking.

Kenpachi grabbed at his zanpakuto. Finally, someone with at least a little spiritual pressure to play with.

"SHIT!" thought Shuuhei, finally paying attention. He did the only thing he thought would save his friend.

"OOf," Kira fell to the ground unconscious from the well placed punch.

Kenpachi turned to face Shuuhei with a growl. Shuuhei was bowing. "I could not allow my friend to be so disrespectful to a captain. Forgive me, I had to take matters into my own hands, sir."

Did…did that work? Shuuhei didn't dare look up.

"Damn it," thought Kenpachi. One was unconscious and the other was just going to stay there not looking up. He couldn't attack someone not expecting it. A thought crossed him mind. Kuchiki. He wanted to fight him forever. He had to be around somewhere.

Shuuhei felt Captain Zaraki's presence retreating and breathed a sigh of relief. He picked up Kira's prone body and started walking towards squad four. He knew that when he woke up there would be no hard feelings between them, he would've wanted Kira to do the same to him in similar circumstances.

* * *

Captain Hitsugaya hated the heat. His whole squad avoided him whenever the temperature started creeping upward, and when it was record breaking heat like it was today they actually starting actively hiding from him. He had already spent an entire hour berating Rangiku. His lieutenant, used to his tempers, could usually just let the things he said roll of her back, but he had actually stopped when he saw that she was starting to tear up. He didn't even remember what he had said, it couldn't have been that bad, could it? Regardless, it was time for a break.

He felt gross, sticky and damp. Even his hair was limp, hanging around his shoulders instead of defying gravity like it usually did.

Toshiro was so concentrated on his misery that he practically ran into Kenpachi.

He looked up.

The big captain towered above him like some sort of freakish clown. Clown? Absolutely, thought Toshiro.

"HAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAA!" he said, pointing at Kenpachi's neon pink spiked hair. "HAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHA!"

"Better get ready kid," said Kenpachi, drawing his zanpakatu.

All of a sudden, Toshiro had a really good idea. He grinned up at the maniac above him, and drew his own zanpakatu.

"Huh," thought Kenpachi happily, "I guess I didn't pay enough attention to the kid before, he actually has some decent fight in him."

Toshiro started running.

"What the…!" Cursing, Kenpachi chased after him. "You running away?"

"Of course not," scowled Toshiro over his shoulder. "I just thought we'd find a better place for it."

"Take a right up here," Kenpachi yelled ahead. "There's a squad eleven training ground at the end of that path." He usually wouldn't give a shit about where he fought, but he really didn't want to be interrupted in the middle of his fun by some squad two goons trying to keep the peace.

"Good place," agreed Toshiro when they got there. "I hope you're ready."

"Of course I'm…"

"Reign over the frosted heavens Hyorinmaru!"

Of course they attracted attention. First there was the intense battling spiritual pressures of two captains fighting, and then there was the fact that it was snowing on part of squad eleven. No one bothered them though. It wasn't until things seemed settled that Ikkaku and Yumichika carefully approached, followed by Rangiku and a curious Renji. No one had seen Yachiru yet, not that anyone blamed her for hiding for awhile.

They spotted the two captains collapsed, almost comfortable looking, on the frost covered ground.

"Mmm," sighed Kenpachi, leaning against a frozen tree. Finally, he wasn't so damn hot.

Toshiro smiled and ran his hand through a small pile of snow.

"So, Yachiru did that to you," he said, pointing at the garish pink of Kenpachi's hair.

"Yeah," Kenpachi sighed.

"Why did you still spike it? It makes you look like something from the carnival."

"Well, it's pink, and my hair is long. When it was down it just looked…" Kenpachi was looking for a word that wasn't "feminine".

"You know, she had to have bleached it first to get it so bright," Toshiro pointed out.

"Shit."

"My lieutenant dyes her hair all the time, she can probably figure something out for you," the little captain suggested.

Kenpachi looked sad, "Yeah but I'm pretty sure she did this to make me look more like her. I figured I should at least keep it a couple of days to make her happy." He didn't look excited about the prospect.

"Oh."

The was silence between the two.

* * *

"Holy shit, are the two of them actually talking?" said Renji, shocked.

"Shut up!" shushed Rangiku. They had stayed their distance when they had realized that neither captain looked seriously injured.

* * *

"Skullcap," said Toshiro suddenly.

"Skullcap?" questioned Kenpachi.

"Yeah, I've seen Ichigo wear one in the world of the living. It's piece of stretchy cloth that you pull down over your head, covering your ears and the back of your neck. You could wear one during the day and have your pink hair for Yachiru when you're at your quarters. At least for a couple of days."

Sounded like a plan to Kenpachi, he'd send Ikkaku to pick one up for him tonight.

"Hey, if it's hot tomorrow I'm gonna kick your ass again," he said.

"What? You think you kicked my ass?" said Toshiro.

"Oh yeah, well maybe I didn't do thoroughly enough!" Kenpachi jumped up.

* * *

"See, and that's why we stayed very far away," said Yumichika, as they ran from the sudden explosion of spiritual pressure between the two captains.


End file.
